This was without a doubt the worst cup of tea I’ve had in a long long time. It even surpassed Adagio’s white cucumber concoction in terms of vileness. And it probably wasn’t even the tea’s fault.

See, this is a backlog from this afternoon on the way home from work. I’ve got a 45-50 minutes train commute and sometimes I buy some sort of coffee drink to go for the trip. Today though, I was super-sleepy (through every fault of my own) so I thought it would be good with some caffeine on the trip. Coffee does indeed have plenty of caffeine, but cappucinos and cafe lattes also have lots of milk, and milk is not all that good at keeping people awake. So something without milk and with caffeine in it. I thought, “hey, this place has Numi teas! Why not give that a shot?” Of course they only had a smaller selection and not the chocolate pu-erh one, so I picked this one because it sounded nice with a vanilla tea.

Erm yeah. Staying awake. Decaf. NEVERMIND!

So that was the first mistake.

I get a to-go cup of water of a temperature that means business, but with my mitten on it was possible to hold the cup. I steeped and then removed the lid from the cup, so I could drink it and get the benefit of the aroma as well. And this is where is started to go wrong, Steepsterites.

The aroma was extremely fruity and sweetly berry-like. Vanilla was there as a hint and I think the thing that added the sweetness.

The tea itself was pretty weak in flavour, and what flavour that actually was there was largely cardboard-y and rooibos-y. Very much on the rooibos, actually, in spite of the bag wrapper not saying anything about it containing rooibos. In fact nowhere I look does it say anything about it containing rooibos so I can only conclude that it’s not supposed to be there.

There was no vanilla in the flavour at all. Not one bit. As a matter of fact there wasn’t even any black tea in the flavour either. Nothing. Not even a hint. All I could pick up was a watered down plain rooibos, which a) wasn’t what I wanted, b) I don’t even like that much and c) doesn’t exist in this place. In fact you could have blindfolded me and let me taste it and I would have said it was a rooibos and I probably wouldn’t even be
the slightest bit in doubt.

How in the name of all that is sweet and wholesome could this have gone so dreadfully dreadfully wrong? I wasn’t expecting perfection but I thought I’d at least be able to get a mediocre cup of tea. I think I know the answer to this.

Cardboard. Cup.

I’ve had that happen before. A cardboard cup that stole all the flavour from an otherwise strong and oversteeped teabag. It was like drinking just hot water. I think this phenomenon was at fault here too. It stole most of the flavour and warped what was left of it into the rooibos-y stuff.

I’m not going to give this a rating due it the nature of the taste-thieving cup. Under other circumstances this might actually have been a lovely tea, but right now after having tried it, I still have no clue what it tastes like.

Oh gosh, I’m sorry you had such a sucky experience :( maybe it was better you avoided the pu-erh…I read that pu-erhs have almost zero caffeine in them! At least decaf tea (if it was tea and not rooibos) has a couple of mgs of caffeine… :)

Shanti, they don’t even have the chocolate pu-erh. If they had I’d have bought a whole box. And it wasn’t rooibos. It’s not supposed to have rooibos in it according to the wrapper. Just black tea and vanilla flavour.
Avoid. Cardboard. To-go. Cups. At. All. Costs!

JacquelineM, at least I didn’t get a stirring thing, I don’t think they have those at that particular cafe, but I have noticed the phenomenon in one of the other ones I frequent. You think you get a cafe latte with hazelnut syrup and what you get if you forget to remove the stick is a caffe latte with… wood.
To-go beverages. The bane of my existance!

Wow, sorry, no chocolate pu-erh and to go cup disaster. I bought this one silicone to go travel mug (two of them actually)(Bed Bath and Beyond: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=16746231) two weeks ago. I know that sometimes they can give off flavor especially to hot brewed teas, but after the second brew, I had no adverse flavoring. When I am on the go, you bet I ask them to fill my to-go cup with hot water for tea because I loathe using cardboard. And helps the environment ;)

Cinoi, yeah, I have one too that I use in the morning, but I didn’t feel like handing that to the woman in the shop. I did find a quieter place to put in the teabag and wait quietly while it steeped, so if I had been smart I could have just poured the hot water over into the other one.
…Oh, why didn’t I think of that???!

Jillian, awesome, I’m looking forward to that. Then we’ll see if I still find it uber-yummy or if it was my christmas spirits speaking. :D

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Oh gosh, I’m sorry you had such a sucky experience :( maybe it was better you avoided the pu-erh…I read that pu-erhs have almost zero caffeine in them! At least decaf tea (if it was tea and not rooibos) has a couple of mgs of caffeine… :)

Shanti, they don’t even have the chocolate pu-erh. If they had I’d have bought a whole box. And it wasn’t rooibos. It’s not supposed to have rooibos in it according to the wrapper. Just black tea and vanilla flavour.
Avoid. Cardboard. To-go. Cups. At. All. Costs!

JacquelineM, at least I didn’t get a stirring thing, I don’t think they have those at that particular cafe, but I have noticed the phenomenon in one of the other ones I frequent. You think you get a cafe latte with hazelnut syrup and what you get if you forget to remove the stick is a caffe latte with… wood.
To-go beverages. The bane of my existance!

Wow, sorry, no chocolate pu-erh and to go cup disaster. I bought this one silicone to go travel mug (two of them actually)(Bed Bath and Beyond: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=16746231) two weeks ago. I know that sometimes they can give off flavor especially to hot brewed teas, but after the second brew, I had no adverse flavoring. When I am on the go, you bet I ask them to fill my to-go cup with hot water for tea because I loathe using cardboard. And helps the environment ;)

Cinoi, yeah, I have one too that I use in the morning, but I didn’t feel like handing that to the woman in the shop. I did find a quieter place to put in the teabag and wait quietly while it steeped, so if I had been smart I could have just poured the hot water over into the other one.
…Oh, why didn’t I think of that???!

Jillian, awesome, I’m looking forward to that. Then we’ll see if I still find it uber-yummy or if it was my christmas spirits speaking. :D

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Ang lives with Husband and two kitties, Charm and Luna, in a house not too far from Århus. Apart from drinking tea, she enjoys baking, especially biscuits, reading and jigsaw puzzles. She has recently acquired an interest in cross-stitch and started a rather large project. It remains to be seen whether she has actually bitten off more than she can chew…

Ang prefers black teas and the darker sorts of oolongs. She has to be in the mood for green and white, and she enjoys, but knows little to nothing about, pu-erh.

Her preferences with black teas are the Chinese ones, particularly from Fujian, but also Keemun and just about anything smoky. She occasionally enjoys Yunnans but they’re not favourites. She has taken some time to research Ceylon teas, complete with reference map, and has recently developed some interest in teas from Africa.

She is sceptical about Indian blacks as she generally finds them too astringent and too easy to get wrong. She doesn’t really care for Darjeelings at all. Very high-grown teas are often not favoured.

She likes flavoured teas as well, particularly fruit flavoured ones, but also had an obsession with finding the Perfect Vanilla Flavoured Black and can happily report that this reclusive beast has been spotted in a local teashop near where she works. Any and all vanilla flavoured teas are still highly attractive to her, though. Also nuts and caramel or toffee. Not so much chocolate. It’s a texture thing.

However, she thinks Earl Grey is generally kind of boring. Cinnamon and ginger are also not really a hit, and she’s not very fond of chais. Evil hibiscus is evil. Even in small amounts, and yes, Ang can usually detect hibiscus, mostly by way of the metallic flavour of blood it has.

Ang is not super impressed with rooibos or honeybush on their own. She doesn’t care for either, really, but when they are flavoured, they go usually go down a treat.

Ang used to have a Standard Panel of teas that she tried to always have on hand. She put a lot of thought into defining it and decided what should go on it. It was a great idea on paper, but in practise has been discovered to not really work as well.

Ang tries her best to make a post on Steepster several times a week. She tends to write her posts in advance in a word doc (The Queue) and posting from there. This, she feels, helps her to maintain regularity and stops her from making five posts in three days and then going three weeks without posting anything at all.

Angrboda is almost always open to swapping. Just ask her. Due to the nature of the queue, however, and the fact that it’s some 24 pages long at the moment, it may take a good while from she receives your parcel and until she actually posts about it.

Find Ang on…
Steam: Iarnvidia (Or Angrboda. She changed her display name and now is not certain which one to search for. She uses the same picture though, so she is easily recognised)
Goodreads: Angrboda
Livejournal: See website.
Dreamwidth: Ask her